Politics and politicians have never been held in lower esteem in this country and there is a grave danger that people will just disengage from the political process unless the campaign strikes a radically fresh tone. I am not sure that months of endless policy announcements and traditional campaigning meets that demanding requirement. 

The uncertainty over the election date lies at the heart of that problem. Having the date in the gift of the Prime Minister of the day is one of the worst aspects of 'old politics'. It has already become a game to guess the date as Labour (ab)uses this power in an attempt to wrong foot the opposition parties. I have always thought that we should have fixed term Parliaments that can only be dissolved in exceptional circumstances to put an end to this nonsense. I would be delighted if Gordon Brown turned around today and said he was going to fix the date now - late-March or early May - to end all the pointless speculation and double-guessing. It won't happen, of course, because Mr Brown is a creature born out of the current system.

Usually, a deluge of press notices flows forth from Whitehall with briefings on the bills announced in such speeches. So far, apart from housing, there has been virtually nothing on the dozen measures the Prime Minister promised. This shows that the announcement was brought forward and rushed out as Labour tries desperately to win back the political initiative.

So, what do we know about the programme that will affect the financial services sector? 

Most obviously, there is a Financial Services and Business Bill that will be the vehicle for delivering regulatory reform. Quite what that reform will look like is still a matter of a major debate but the short briefing from 10 Downing Street on the bill makes it clear that the government is sticking to its decision to give the Financial Services Authority greater powers "to ensure financial stability". This has already provoked an increasingly bitter confrontation with the Bank of England and is likely to be the most contentious measure in the draft legislative programme.

This bill will also create a new national money guidance service which follows on from the Thoresen Review (published in October 2007) and the pilot schemes currently being run offering generic advice.

Less contentious, but very welcome to the insurance industry, will be the Flood and Water Management Bill which promises "increased investment in flood defence and improved emergency planning and flood risk management". This sounds as if it should be everything the insurance industry wanted following the Pitt Report in the wake of the severe flooding two years ago. Of course, the devil will be in the detail but at least it is there to be argued about.

The big cloud that hangs over all of this is the uncertainty over the timing of the General Election and, of course, its outcome. The dozen bills announced yesterday could be forced through if this Parliament runs to next June but any foreshortening of the session or unforeseen political or financial crises (and there have been enough of those around in the last year) and the government will struggle to complete this programme.

With government spending now so far beyond any previous targets as borrowing heads towards 11% of national income (the highest among the G7 countries) and the public finances deteriorating daily as tax receipts plummet, the tax timebomb is ticking. Fear of its potential damage to the economy has already tipped the Conservatives into state of public confusion. On Saturday, shadow chancellor George Osborne said that a 45% Income Tax band was inevitable, even though that would be little more than a flea bite on the bloated public sector deficit. Yesterday, Kenneth Clarke, recently restored to the Conservative front bench as shadow business secretary, suggested that the previous Tory commitment to raise the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1m could be jettisoned. This was clearly too much tax in one weekend for the  Tories and Mr Clarke was busy "clarifying" his remarks this morning saying that the £1m threshold would be in the next manifesto.

The simple truth is that taxes will have to go up almost as soon as any recovery looks secure. The real questions are by how much, how fast and how can it be done in such a way that the government doesn't promptly push the UK economy back into reverse. The minor turbulence that has disturbed the Conservative revival this weekend will be nothing as the tax bomb ticks ever louder over the coming months.